Scab and Plaster
by Collie Parkillo
Summary: Ray Garraty sees a boy jump from the overpass and somehow hits the ground along with him.


Ray used to like to walk from his town all the way down the edge of the highway until he reached the overpass.

It was a comfort thing. He liked to be away from home, because he didn't like the way his mother's crying sounded through the wall and all the constant phone calls, and the pictures of Jan on his walls had stopped being comforting and started being condescending.

Just when the dusk started to seep into the little Maine town, Ray would walk out the back door with the gnats buzzing around his legs, and walk down the edge of the highway where nettles made them red and puckering.

The overpass was nondescript. Almost no one ever walked on it, and Ray had never been sure why it was really there. But he was glad it was, because it gave him a place to go. He'd read in all those deceivingly brightly colored books his mother gave him that everyone needed some special place to go.

And he supposed the overpass was his.

The air was crisp that one night. Crickets sang softly below, though the hum of cars on the road dulled the country noises.

Ray found himself breathing hard on the small, metal steps. They were surprisingly steep, and he'd used to trip on them when he first started to come up to the overpass.

But that night, he was met with an unfamiliar sight.

A boy was standing on the overpass rail, his arms spread out like an Olympic diver. At first, Ray wondered why he was there, then swore at himself for being such an idiot. The boy was going to jump.

He squinted at his features, trying to make out who it might be. The boy's dark hair blew slightly in the evening wind and he continued to stare straight ahead.

"Hey," Ray said cautiously.

The boy said nothing, didn't even look at him. He was small and lanky, and looked as though he might just blow away if the wind hit him hard enough. His clothes hung limply on his body, and he gave an overall appearance of being put together wrong.

Then it hit him. That was Gary Barkovitch. That was the boy that he'd heard screaming in year eight when a couple of freshmen had pummeled him against a locker. That was the boy who was always bitter and always angry, and Ray had somehow never understood him.

"Barkovitch?"

Barkovitch said nothing, still, and turned to look at him. His dark, menacing eyes were somehow large and sad, and his expression said more than he could ever did with his all of his words.

And somehow Ray couldn't even find it in him to ask him to stop. All of his conscious was reaching out towards Barkovitch, longing to grab him and hold him and tell him that this wasn't the answer, to cradle him in his arms and tell him that he was _sorry._ But Ray Garraty himself could never do that.

Then Barkovitch looked at him again, smiling. Ray stood dumbfounded, trying to make his mouth move.

And then Barkovitch jumped. His arms were spread wide, and there was an audible splat when he hit the highway. The sound of cars and their drivers panicking surfaced, too, and Ray began to cry quietly on the gritty highway overpass.

Barkovitch's funeral procession passed Ray's house, and he wondered morbidly if they'd saved Barkovitch's mangled corpse. He pressed his nose to the windowpane and stared, Barkovitch had had no friends to speak of and yet a few boys walked there with him.

Stebbins, the top of Ray's literature class, who had no friends either. And Collie Parker, a loudmouthed basketball player. Both of them walked in silence, barely seeming to be aware of each other. A tall boy who looked like he could have been Barkovitch's older brother walked beside them, staring off into space.

His mother tapped him on the shoulder, with that false, sugarcoated worry practically oozing from her hands, and asked him if he'd known that boy. Ray said that no, he hadn't, and she asked him whether he wanted to join the funeral procession.

Ray had said no, and slumped against the window, his head buried in his hands. He vaguely thought of Jan, and wondered if he'd ever told her how much he fucking hated that little bastard, Gary Barkovitch.

He watched the funeral procession until it was no longer visible, and still Ray sat there, staring at the wake of sadness left behind on the street from Barkovitch's tiny, pathetic number of mourners. He tried to picture whether Barkovitch had imagined his own funeral, and failed to do so. It had looked like the funeral of a suicide, and he wondered if his mother had known.

No one at school spoke about it. No one apologized, like in the movies. Nobody went to sit by Barkovitch's grave and put flowers on his resting place and say they were sorry, and nobody shook their heads and said that he hadn't deserved it.

He wondered what had made Barkovitch jump. Had it been Hank Olson's constant taunts, or Collie Parker's occasional snort whenever somebody attacked the smaller boy.

It was as though the event had never even happened. Someone asked Ray what had happened to Barkovitch. They asked why school suddenly seemed like a ghost town. He said he didn't know, and started walking more quickly. But something had changed. Collie Parker was more silent. Hank Olson shuffled down the hallways, his head down, instead of his usual stride.

But nobody remembered. Nobody said Gary Barkovitch's name. Nobody put up a memorial. There was no assembly in memory of him. Although Ray could tell that he'd died. People knew, oh yes, people knew.

But nobody wanted to say it, and when he came home Ray's mother told him that if he wanted to talk to somebody about it, he could. He'd retreated to his room, not speaking much and not phoning Jan as much as he used to.

Ray's mother finally called a therapist, a nice woman who told him that she had a daughter named Priscilla at his school, and the first thing she did was ask if Ray knew her. He said no, his eyes downcast. She asked him if he'd been Barkovitch's friend. Again, he said no. After answering 'no' to her every question, she finally explained to him the concept of survivor guilt and sent him off with some pills if things got too bad.

At dusk that day, when his mother was listening to old, sad records and giving off the feeling of remorse that he hated because he felt it too, Ray brought a bouquet of roses to the overpass with him.

* * *

**the idea of barkovitch/garraty is suddenly very appealing. i in no way own the long walk.**


End file.
